An interim report into last week's Selby rail crash, which claimed 10 lives and injured 70 others, has been published today by the health and safety executive.

Running to just 10 pages, the report details the initial investigation into the "unaviodable" disaster by the HSE's railway inspectorate, and focuses on a factual account of the crash, which was sparked by a trailer-towing Land Rover.

The vehicle, driven by Gary Hart, 36, from Strubby, Lincolnshire, careered off the M62 near the village of Great Heck, North Yorkshire.

It ran down an embankment and ended up on the UK's fastest rail line - the London to Scotland east coast route - and was struck by a King's Cross-bound GNER 225 express train travelling at 125mph.

The train, the 4.45am from Newcastle, was derailed but continued down the track in an upright position before colliding almost head on with a coal-carrying Freightliner goods train travelling from Immingham, Humberside, to Ferrybridge, west Yorkshire.

"The immediate cause of the collision is quite clear - the Land Rover fouled the track. The circumstances that led to the Land Rover ending up on the railway track and the subsequent catastrophic events were not easily foreseeable," it says.

"HSE considers, on the basis of the evidence to date, that there was nothing that the railway industry could reasonably have done to prevent the collisions."

The report says that the freight train was running 20 minutes early but adds that its early departure was within the rules. The driver had no chance of avoiding the collision with the London-bound GNER train.

The document's release follows the disclosure last night that the father of one of the victims of the disaster died in a train accident more than 30 years ago.

Clive Vidgen, 39, of Bishopthorpe, near York, was on his way to a business meeting in Swindon, Wiltshire, when the crash happened last Wednesday.

His father, a railway worker, was killed by a train while working next to a line in December 1969.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire police said: "Clive's death is the second tragic incident to hit the family and they are obviously devastated."

Another victim named yesterday by police was professor Steve Baldwin, a pioneering psychologist from York, who had been travelling to London to give a keynote seminar speech at the Institute of Psychiatry.

Colleagues at Teesside University paid tribute to him. Vice chancellor professor Derek Fraser said: "The whole university community is in shock. We have lost an immensely valued and talented colleague."

GNER train driver John Weddle, from Throckley, near Newcastle, buffet car chef Paul Taylor, 42, from Newcastle and one of the two drivers of the goods train - Stephen Dunn, 39, from Brayton, Selby - were among those killed in the crash.

The other men named yesterday were Alan Frederick Ensor, 44, a civil engineering project manager from Dunnington, near York, and Barry Needham, 40, a freight logistics coordinator of Willow Bank, New Earswick, York.

Investigations are continuing into the road's design and conditions on it at the time of the accident. A separate report form the Highways Agency found the crash barriers at the accident scene would have had to be more than double their length if they were to have prevented the Land Rover from leaving the motorway.